


Post-Vaingloria

by tsalagay



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), The Master (TV), Смерть Кощея Бессмертного | The Death of Koschei the Deathless (Fairy Tale)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 07:48:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16013498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsalagay/pseuds/tsalagay
Summary: The Master, freshly escaped from the Time Lock on Gallifrey, searches for new and fun ways to hold the Universe at his mercy.





	1. I

Regeneration burns. As a famous Earth author wrote, it’s a pleasure.

Every cell in your body dies. You die. You can feel your body tearing itself apart and binding back together again. And then you’re new. No trace of your old life, except an archive of memories and a pair of ancient eyes.

The Time Lords always liked the idea of erasure. The slate becomes clean when a Gallifreyan regenerates, and you’re left with no morals and no strings attached. This is what has kept their civilization alive for so long. But bodies like the Senate of the Academy made a planet-sized army of blank vessels, sent them off to die and die and die, until all anybody could remember was the burning.

The stench of regeneration by the thousands on the battlefield. The Master still remembers his days as a general. He would look out onto the battlefield and see a million faces on fire, and a million more already lifeless. People he loved and could no longer recognize and all he wanted was to die.

But of course he couldn’t. They made sure of that.

Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise: Gallifrey was long dead before the end of the War. 

We killed ourselves.


	2. II

The rain is pink on Athena Seven. What’s worse, it stains everything else pink. The city buildings, statues, hover-subways, people, it’s all the same color now. It won’t wash off for days, and in most cases it all just gets baked on by the sun. Most of the streets by now are a bleached, chalky pink color after millennia of abusive rainfall.

The Master hates this place. His shoes always get ruined.

“I just don’t see the point, really.” 

“But don’t you think it’d be a nice change of pace?” the Master asked. 

The creature shrugged indifferently. As a local, the thing had been painted pink since before it can remember. Its life is monochrome. “Sounds like something a tourist would say. What did you say they were called again?”

“Umbrellas,” the Master tried again. Athenaean wasn’t his best language, and there’s no word for “umbrella” here. He made do with the Gallifreyan term. “Or parasoles, depending on when you’re from.”

The creature furrowed its many eyebrows. “You mean where,” it corrected him. “Where you’re from.”

“Besides, it wouldn’t be much help for long,” the Master pressed on. “I reckon an umbrella would turn out the pinkest of them all in this place.” 

There’s a pause. The Master peered out from under the awning, squinting up into the pale clouds above. The awning covered the doorway to the pair’s apartment building. Surprisingly, this civilization has bothered with awnings (but not umbrellas). 

The Master didn’t notice how long he stared up at that sky. It was easy for him to get distracted. He could see the clouds breathe. A drumbeat pulsed from the stars, and shook the horizon. It was beautiful, terrifying, big, whole. He couldn’t look away.

Sometimes the drums drove him mad, but sometimes they were ethereal.

The Athenaean cleared its throat. “Well,” it said, “I’d best be off to work. Talk to you.” It slopped away, its four boneless legs pulling the rest of its weight behind it. The Time Lord laughed. The drums were in the ground now, and the vibrations moved through him with such a force that he began to shake. Time was calling to him, as it always does.

Under the dark safety of this awning, he retrieved a cigarette out from inside his jacket. All that time spent on Earth, there really were better habits he could have picked up. Of all the medicines in all of the Universe, and this is what helps his knees from not giving out underneath him.

Isn’t that funny? Isn’t it just hilarious?

**Author's Note:**

> this is more of a drabble than anything else, though yeah i do have a plot in mind for the rest of this story. i've never used ao3 before so i have no idea how much reception i'll get. also i have no set regeneration in mind for this, it's more of my own OC in between all the ones we see on-screen. thanks for reading :~)


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